(An investigation in which we decide to use Facebook’s social graph API to see whether fake news or real news is more viral).

UPDATE: Since posting, there has been some discussion about this post’s use of the phrase “top stories from local newspapers”. A clarification on how that phrase is used has been appended at the end of the post with some methodology, and some small clarifying edits have been made. The title and core claim of the post remains accurate and stands. What we present here is not the best possible measure of fake vs. real virality, but it is a meaningful one, and deserves to be addressed.

Mark Zuckerberg told us recently that fake stories on Facebook were quite rare, less than 1% of total content. I’m not sure how he computes “content”, exactly. Is my status update content? Each photo I upload?

He also says his company has studied fake news and found it’s a “very small volume” of the content on Facebook. He did not specify if that content is more or less viral or impactful than other information. [Source: NPR]

Well, if Zuckerberg can’t specify if fake news is more viral on Facebook, maybe we can, using the publicly available Facebook APIs. Let’s help him out!

The question I want to ask is this: how do popular fake Facebook stories from fake local newspapers compare to top stories from real local newspapers? Not “how many stories are there of each” but rather “Is fake news or real news more likely to be shared, and what’s the size of the difference?”

If Facebook is truly a functioning news ecosystem we should expect large local newspapers like the Boston Globe and LA Times to compete favorably with fake “hoax” newspapers like the Baltimore Gazette or Denver Guardian — fake “papers” that were created purely to derive ad views from people looking for invented Clinton conspiracies.

For our fake story, we’re choosing the most popular story from the Denver Guardian, a fake newspaper created in the final days of the election. Its story “FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide”has now been shared on Facebook well over half a million times, as you can see with this call to Facebook’s API. This story exists on a site made to look like a real local newspaper and details quotes from people both real and fake about the murder-suicide of an FBI agent and his wife supposedly implicated in leaking Clinton’s emails. According to the story he shot himself and his wife and then set his house on fire. Pretty fishy, eh? Add it to the Clinton Body Count.

The story is, of course, completely fake. But at 568,000 shares (shares, mind you, not views) it is several orders of magnitude more popular a story than anything any major city paper publishes on a daily basis.

“Oh, hold on Mike, you say, ‘orders of magnitude’, but a lot of people misunderstand that phrase. Something shared several orders of magnitude more frequently would have to be shared literally around a thousand times more.”

Yep. That’s what I am saying: this article from a fake local paper was shared one thousand times more than material from real local papers.

Don’t believe me?

For our “real” stories, we are choosing the stories the papers have identified as their most popular of the day, via their “most popular stories” section on their site. (We are not choosing the most popular story they have based on Facebook data — I don’t currently have a way to know that).

The Boston Globe’s most popular article today (according to their site) is an article from its famous Spotlight team (yes, that Spotlight team) on the tragedy of shutting down psychiatric facilities in Massachusetts and elsewhere and replacing them with nothing. Number of shares? 181.

The LA Times has an editorial piece that is today’s most popular on their site titled “We’re called redneck, ignorant, racist. That’s not true’: Trump supporters explain why they voted for him.”That ought to share more generally than LA people, right? Number of shares: 342 shares.

The Chicago Tribune has a truly national story currently trending, “Trump and advisers back off major campaign pledges, including Obamacare and the wall”. The story is originally from the Washington Post, but is about as major a story as you get. Number of shares: 1774.

Now you could go national as well — that story from the Tribune was from the Washington Post, and is a top trending story there as well. So what does a truly national, click-ready story get you? Number of shares: 38,162.

Let’s plot that on a graph, shall we? Again, remember that these are not random selections — these are stats for the trending stories from each publication:

To put this in perspective, if you combined the top stories from the Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and LA Times, they still had only 5% the viewership of an article from a fake news site that intimated strongly that the Democratic Presidential candidate had had a husband and wife murdered then burned to cover up her crimes.

The fact that Mark Zuckerberg can shrug his shoulders with his best “Who, me?” face — I’m trying to stay logical here, but I feel very sick to my stomach. There is nothing trivial, rare, or occasional about fake news on Facebook. Fake news outperforms real news on Facebook by several orders of magnitude. The financial rewards for pushing fake news to Facebook are also several orders of magnitude higher, and so expect this to continue until Zuckerberg came come to terms with the conspiracy ecosystem he created, and the effect it has had of U.S. Politics.

UPDATE: Dan Barker notes that there are some stories on the LA Times site (and other sites) that have outperformed what those sites self-identify as their “top stories” or “most popular stories”. As one example, a story about a KKK march in the LA Times yesterday got north of 250,000 shares on Facebook yesterday, but for reasons that aren’t clear is not listed as a “most popular” story on the LA Times site. That might be because people shared it without clicking through, or it could be because the algorithm they use rolls day-old stories off the trending list.

Outside of the fact that that still puts the LA Times at a disadvantage to the fake Denver Guardian, I think the analysis is still valuable here. What we are looking at is how likely a popular story on a news site is to go viral as compared to what can be achieved on a fake news site. This is interesting because the popular stories on a news site exist (to some extent) outside Facebook’s algorithm, and provide a sense of what we might think of as traditional top news stories.

Is it the best comparison that can be made? No — so let’s make better comparisons. Please. Show me up. Build the tools to do it, and get Facebook to open access to its data so it can be done systemically. But let’s not take Facebook at its word here.

Perhaps the reason folks DON’T believe in the mainstream news is because they have experience at being slighted by them over the years. My case in point: I have been to the annual March For Life at our state capitol building in Olympia, WA where I have witnessed 1000’s (thousands!) of people marching in defense of unborn children from abortion. Each year there have been only a dozen (12) abortion supporters. Yet, each year our local media alphabet affiliates (ABC, CBS, NBC) manage to either not report on it at all or else they only show the Pro-choice “crowd” of a few. Why?! What are they afraid of reporting, the Truth-in-numbers??
I have seen recently where mainstream media did report onthe 100’s (hundreds) of pro-gun folks gathered in support of 2nd Amendment rights, however.
When the media gets to choose what they “want” to report rather than what is actual truth reporting, THAT is precisely WHY people may be turning to the “fake” sources–for comfort in seeing their point of view finally being aired–one way or another. Sad this atmosphere has been created by the very folks that have been socially engineering us theough the press.
Think about it.

Truth is not in numbers, or “comfort in seeing their point of view finally being aired.” (And frankly, everyone knows what anti-abortion activists think. Anti-abortion activists have plenty of websites, plenty of social media accounts, and no problem at all being known for what they believe. There’s nothing new; it’s been the same for decades.) That a lot of people (a minority, but a lot) want to control women’s lives and force them to bear children they do not want, and continue pregnancies that will kill them if not terminated, does not make their view “truth” or “right” or even necessarily newsworthy, since they’ve already spread their message and brand so widely.

Truth is in facts, which those who just want the comfort of seeing their own views expressed are often not willing to accept or engage with. Think about that.

I read your petition. What it asks for is vague & can result in open censorship of the worst kind.

Instead, you should pay attention to what used to be called the Fairness Doctrine implimented long ago by the FCC.

It served to keep broadcasters honest, without the kind of qualifying punishment conditions your petition could easily encourage, since you’re asking for laws.

The Fairness Doctrine worked as a somewhat silent control mechanism. It was rescinded by some very bad people during the Reagan years, resulting in the kind of legal lying environment that we suffer with today.

Today, news is classified as “entertainment” and that’s why we’re in this trap of crap. It is legal to lie.

The Fairness Doctrine would only need to be updated to include the new media digital publishing online resources.

Online petitions accomplish exactly nothing politically, except making you feel like you are engaging in practical advocacy. Phone calls to your representatives are a different matter. An actual, old-fashioned snail mail letter is even better.

Wow you got 2 signatures very impressive. I’m sure one of them you got from the obituaries. 306-232
Your candidate lost! No amount of crying is going to change that fact. Mainstream media is biggest source of fake news. Did you ever think that’s why she lost. People can see through the crap which is Mainstream media. Now go play with your play do and pet some dog you will feel better.

The honest reporing of real news fairly and objectively is fundamental to freedom. The flag waving constitutional Conservatives should be screaming from on high. Instead we hear that the press core is possibly being abolished. Are we now to get our news through Bannon and Brietbart? Pick up and read a communist Russian propoganda newspaper and gasp. Infowars should be so good, but they are worming their way into gullible and not so gullible info streams. The disinformation being spread and believed as fact can change America just like Nazi Germany and Hitler did. Licensing? Required fact checking, counter opinions, law suits and some level of factual truth may become necessary.

Skype has opened up its internet-centered customer beta
to the entire world, soon after introducing it extensively within the United states and You.K.
before this month. Skype for Internet also now facilitates Chromebook and Linux for immediate text messaging
conversation (no voice and video nevertheless, all those need a connect-in installation).

The increase of your beta adds assist for an extended listing of spoken languages
to help you bolster that overseas functionality

About Me

Among other things, I run the Digital Polarization Initiative, an cross-institutional initiative to improve civic discourse by developing web literacy skills in college undergraduates. Have a class that wants to join? Contact me at michael.caulfield at wsu.edu.